Over the course of the past century, the public realm in our mass societies has undergone a series of fundamental transformations. These changes correspond to essential modifications in the function of the image in the mass media, which is the principal source of public communication. The televisual image, the internet, the world wide web and accompanying types of digital technology, in their ubiquity and familiarity, lend pattern to the public sphere in its contemporary form. According to the argument presented in this talk, the format of mass communications, as it mobilizes visual imagery, has become a principle contemporary source of public visibility, indeed of an iconic status which, as it is publicly conveyed and remembered, is readily translated into mass celebrity and novel contemporary forms of public influence.